It is known in the prior art to bring together a multiplicity of optical fibers in peak-to-valley relationship, and to fuse them then into subassemblies later then fused together to produce a final array, as in Woodcock U.S. Pat. No. 3,216,807, "Method for Making Fiber Optical Devices", issued Nov. 9, 1965.
It is known also to bring together a multiplicity of three-filament fibers, each with a larger center filament and two smaller filaments fused, 180.degree. apart, to the larger one, in a relationship peak-to-valley with respect to the larger center portion, the smaller fiber portions being accommodated by the valleys, into fused subassemblies; and to bring a multiplicity of these subassemblies, with the same peak-to-valley and smaller filament relationships, into a fused array, as in Phaneuf U.S. Pat. No. 3,615,313, "Method of Making Optical Fibers, Image Transfer Devices", issued Oct. 26, 1971. This patent also discloses multifibers with two opposed outer rows in which adjacent fibers do not abut, but rather are gapped therebetween.
It is known also in the art to make a multifiber element of as many as almost 8000 fibers by bringing together that many single fibers in a jig, with all fibers in each outer row abutting, and then drawing and sintering, following which a multiplicity of such multifibers are brought together and sintered to increase cross-sectional area accordingly.
It has been taught to use flowing water to bring into alignment a randomly related group of loosely related image fibers, as in Yoshimura et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,397,524, "Image-Transmitting Bundled Optical Fibers", granted Aug. 9, 1983.